Mark, John, and ?

Hey,

You guys seem to be on top of things, which is excellent and is a key reason I am interested in DA. But I am curious, is there anyone else behind the operation? Do you have any support guys, or someone who answers the phone? What happens if both of you are on vacation or un-reachable and I need assistance immediately (i.e. someone to go in and tinker on my server for $$$)?

Thanks,

Brian

Hello,

Although we are the only official people behind DA, there are many qualified people willing to help in a pinch on the forum. However, you shouldn't really need to worry about that becuase we understand that we need to be available to our customers. Even when on "vacation" (as I was a few days ago), we'll still check email a few times per day and go through the forum. We make sure that we are always available to respond within a reasonable amount of time. We also make sure that one of us is available, meaning, we'll never be gone at the same time (unless we have a connection where we are ). The bottom line is that it's not something that you'll really need to be overly concerned about.

John

Immediate assistance is something we never promise, but we do promise to be available at all times (e.g. even if we are on vacation) and respond within a reasonable period (e.g. 12 hours for support, 24-48 hours for sales). This means split shifts, cell phone and laptop, and temporary staff (hired locally).

In other words, there won't be a time when assistance isn't available. And, as John said, anything non-account related can probably be answered on the forum.

Mark

I can confirm this. I've submitted a couple of tickets during this vacation and I got answers.

Do you have any plans to have permanent support in the near future?

Thanks,

Brian

If by permanent you mean hired shift workers, then probably not. I have to be blunt by saying that live, on-call support is not justified given the low license price.

If you think about it, "emergencies" caused by DirectAdmin are very, very, very rare. Most of the time support requests are caused by configuration problems, and are answered quite easily on the forum and soon from our knowledgebase page.

Regardless, we are always quick to answer technical matters and I think we are above average compared to the competition.

Mark

Brian,

I work for a ISP and we have reciently switched to DirectAdmin with RH 7.3, 9.0 and FreeBSD boxes we probably only have a few but all our virtual and some of our managed customers run DA. Take anyone in the forum as a example including me and see how quickly some of my issues have be resolved!

Mark and John are ALWAYS their for anyone. They are quick to reply either on the forum or via email and always go above and beyond. If you are worried that DA is a fly by night control panel...don't be. They have done things that have shocked me (such as changing the root password because it was sent via plain text over email, most people overlook that)...forget the price they are worth 2x as much as we pay for a license.

Thanks for the feedback existenz

I should also point out that DirectAdmin is our only job, so we are able to devote full attention to our customers and product development. This isn't a side job or hobby, and we *don't* have "real" jobs elsewhere.

Although people love the telephone for instant support, we have found this method to be extremely time consuming. E-mail is much quicker because we have all the details, in print, right in front of us. This means problems are solved in moments. Also, because John and I don't always work in the same location, e-mail lets us route messages to the appropriate person. In addition, it is easy to determine which person needs the fastest assistance.

Most importantly, there are a few key people on the forum who we appreciate greatly. They often beat us to the punch.

Mark

Brian S said:

Do you have any plans to have permanent support in the near future?

Thanks,

Brian

Click to expand...

I think most importantly you need to remember that it isn't the role of control panel support to fix things on people's servers - that is the sole job of a system administrator. DirectAdmin support is available for control panel related issues only, which, to be honest really don't exist. Occasionally one of us finds a bug and reports it, and it's fixed in the next version but it has never been anything critical that has disabled the functioning or availability of any of our servers.

When you do come across an issue that concerns DirectAdmin directly, an e-mail to Mark on John is promply returned within 10-45 minutes. The only time I've ever had to wait longer was when I sent an e-mail early in the morning (which is even earlier in the morning over on the west coast).

And lastly, because DA is so independent from system services (unlike Ensim), there is rarely a time when someone here on the forum or at WHT can't answer your question or help you resolve an issue.

I switched from Ensim back when DA was first publicly released, and it's been the best decision I've made for my business. I hope you do the same.

I appreciate everyone's reply. I do think DA is a pretty solid product and Mark and John are on top of things.

I do like insurance, and my question was not asking if I could bug them about server problems. If I had a catastrophic problem with the control that needed to be resolved immediately, I ideally would like a number I could call or email address that I could email to pay someone to resolve the issue.

Thanks,

Brian

Hi Brian,

I understand exactly what you are saying. However, DirectAdmin has never failed / caused downtime, and nearly all the "emergencies" we've encountered have been system adminstrator tasks rather than DirectAdmin Support tasks.

That isn't to say DA is problem free, but most glitches are very minor and fixed quickly. We haven't opted for the phone/paid support because:

- 99% of calls aren't DA related
- people threaten to kill us if we charge for support
- the process is much more time consuming than e-mail
- our non-DA expierence is limited, so you are better off paying someone more qualified

Thanks!

Mark

Okey dokey, I understand your position. Let me add this as a suggestion then: It may be worthy to have an emergency support option. Say, a client could pay $100 for emergency assistance with DA, thus guaranteeing your availability after hours. Kind of like RackAid and other support companies offer. Even though we/I may never need it and you're generally here anyway, it does offer some comfort knowing it is there and immediate attention could be secured in the case of an unforeseen emergency.

Thanks,

Brian

DirectAdmin Sales said:

Hi Brian,

I understand exactly what you are saying. However, DirectAdmin has never failed / caused downtime, and nearly all the "emergencies" we've encountered have been system adminstrator tasks rather than DirectAdmin Support tasks.

Click to expand...

I was going to reply to this thread earlier on with very similar comments........ usually when nothing works from command line and your whole server wont come up after a reboot.... its usually just a rf -rf /

scary

Chris

I have had a few issues since I started using DA, support has always been there (4-6 hours) which is very good as we are in different time zones and all the issues have been cases of my not understanding DA as opposed to actual DA problems, and as a result have all been resolved by John and Mark teaching me a few things.

teedee

DA Support is the BEST!!

We here in The Netherland have VERY GOOD thinks to say about the Support. They help us many times very fast, even in the small hours.. .Keep this up!!